Question

Which rhetorical strategy does the writer primarily employ in this essay?
exposition

description

narration

persuasion

Known for his narrative poems set in New England locales, Robert Frost may seem like a simple poet. Many people young and old can relate to his oft-read verse, including "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "The Road Not Taken," and "Mending Wall." A second or third reading of Frost's poems reveals, however, that his poetry is far from simple. Frost creates poems that are just as complex as they are accessible to the everyday reader. The effect is that they're deceptively simple.

"Mending Wall," published in 1914, is a perfect example of this. Frost's lines read easily on the surface. This belies how masterfully crafted the formal lines really are. This poem is about two neighbors' springtime ritual of repairing a stone wall that has been damaged by the natural forces of winter and deliberately by hunters. The poem’s famous line, "Good fences make good neighbors," is quoted in many different contexts.

The first line of "Mending Wall," "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," shows from the beginning that Frost's lines have a formal purpose. The lines have a literal meaning, but this meaning is reinforced by the way Frost constructed the lines. Frost's use of inversion, wherein he writes the line in a turned-around way instead of the more natural sounding, "There is something that doesn’t love a wall," creates a sense of mystery and questioning, just as the first line of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" does: "Whose woods these are I think I know."